We need no language, with time on our side
by fleurdesels
Summary: Time is a paradox. And so are they, really. The largest being that Snow has lived the future three hundred years before it happens. Hope just wants to gain an understanding, and regain the ones he has lost. /snow/hope, notes inside/


**TITLE**: we need no language with time on our side  
><strong>CHAPTER<strong>: 1/4  
><strong>FANDOM<strong>: final fantasy xiii-2  
><strong>PAIRINGS<strong>: snow/hope, past!snow/serah  
><strong>RATING<strong>: pg-13  
><strong>WARNINGS<strong>: spoilers for xiii-2, none otherwise, so far  
><strong>DISCLAIMER<strong>: i stake no claim in this  
><strong>WORD<strong> **COUNT**: 6000  
><strong>SUMMARY<strong>: time is a paradox. and so are they, really. the largest one is that snow has lived the future three hundred years before it happens. hope just wants to gain and understanding, and re-gain the ones he lost.

**NOTES**: the game hasn't come out so this? this is basically fucking majorly with canon, or what we know of xiii-2 canon at least. obviously some major spoilers for both characters and for the plot. for clarification - hope is 24 in this, and snow being 7 years his senior, it makes him 31. this is the first part of four planned, the rest are most likely going to be larger than this one. 

* * *

><p>Hope has grown used to living off the edge of a paradox. The premise of the quest for the fall of Cocoon had been one, an idea simple, but with a follow of results unimaginable. And not just to him, but to all of them. For Snow, and Sazh. Vanille and Fang. Serah, and Lightning.<p>

And that is where it stops. Stop, rewind. 

* * *

><p><em>He's fourteen, sweat is sticking his scarf to the sore skin of his neck, ash and blood clumps his fringe together and the grass of Gran Pulse beneath his feet is an endless sea, it still feels unsure and it pulses in its wake. He holds the switchblade out for Serah, somehow he knows it holds a measure of significance, but seeing equal parts reminiscence and distraught on her face isn't what he expects.<em>

_"I found it near the base of the pillar." It's all he can say. Serah's face contorts and Snow hits out with his arms in empty space, confused._

_"Serah, I'm sorry," he says._ They all were, Hope thinks, back then. _In the rewind of time, the light filtering through behind the crystalline pillar is softly rosy and pink, and the sky is a large bruise, still purple and miscolored. They are the only ones who know, presently they still are._

_"She was here just a second ago!" Serah insists, but she hadn't been. Play, wind back to present. He's twenty four, and he knows-perhaps not knows, not yet he doesn't, but he suspects otherwise. That she might have been right_

* * *

><p>"Alyssa, could we take this tomorrow?" he says on the cell intercom, "I'm sorry, it's just that I've got a lot on my plate, and I can't do it all in one night."<p>

Alyssa quirks an eyebrow at him from her seat at her working desk in the far end of the office whilst she continues tapping a case report at her keyboard. After some time she finishes, swipes a hand through her hair and bends to pack her laptop up. Hope taps his password in and disconnects from ROOT and, likewise, shuts down for the evening. He nods, she nods, and she enters his separate cubicle deftly and gathers the _roughcast_ scribble marked manila folders up against her chest without complaint.

At the door she stops, her heels ceasing their hard clicks against the floor. "You mean _we've_ got a lot on our plates, Director."

He smiles. "Yeah, I said so, didn't I? On mine."

He rises and grabs his discarded coat from the chair. The local forecast warned for torrential rain earlier during lunch, but the evening is soft and the summer sun blinks owlish from behind clouds the color of halcyon. He shrugs it on and, not entirely surprised to see Alyssa remain in the room, consents. "Alright, so I might share my problems with you a lot more than I wish to."

Alyssa shrugs her shoulders. "Martyr speech looks really bad on you, Director." He frowns, but she's quick to elaborate. "I'm your research assistant, and on some occasions your personal one. Hope, don't close up on me."

He hesitates. "Let's go."

She sighs, but the lilting smile he offers as a temporary peacemaker she reprocitates, if hers is half worried half exasperated, and walks ahead of him out of the office.

They part ways at the entrance to Academy's headquarters, firmly built at the heart of the Business District, it is erect tall and primary of bulletproof glass panorama and granite. The city is a conjoint of it, he thinks. All harsh, all hard, grounded on a foundation of free truth. "It isn't always what you want," he reflects to nobody and anybody, "but it beats living in a lie."

Academia isn't grounded, a storey complex of skyscrapers and apartments who tap at the sky, it grows naturally upwards, grabbing palms who search for more in a steady stream of want. It is the beginning of something created with a pure purpose, and he is part of the movement who shapes it. It makes him feel proud, even as the disjointed feeling of not knowing _enough_, gnaws hollowly in the pit of his stomach.

He doesn't live far, two grounds off, a campus of flats deep into the city. It enjoys its own tranquility, and so do most of the citizens, so long as they follow the issued security guidelines. Hope remembers his encounters with lingering Cie'th in some of the districts when they're blackened by night and drowned in rain.

He digs in his pocket for his keys, still maintaining a sense of nostalgia through the grip on the uniquely issued metal, instead of updating to a card. Alyssa sometimes asks him about it, but he'd lost most of his personal belongings in the Purge, so he doesn't have the ones he had to the family house in Palumpolum.

He reflects that there are many things he lost over the years, and not just his personal belongings. People to whom he had strong bonds, as well. His mother, to the war. Lightning, Fang and Vanille, to Cocoon. Snow, to the world, he supposes.

He steps out of his shoes and turns the lock again, drowning out the noise of the city, slightly soothing the throbbing in his temples. He has a lot of work to do, but he can't bring himself to start it. There's a board meeting to be called in the morning, he has to file a report to Rygdea, and another to conclude a PSICOM investigation into the alleged location of remains of Pulse Fal'Cie.

Hope makes it to the boxed-in yard, slumping into a metal chair and stretching out to a fading blue sky, he pops his neck and his spine, solid cracks escaping them, the concave of his back aching. Snow Villiers, he thinks, and is reminded of summer tan skin and blonde stubble, a leather cape soft with wear, too flawed to be a hero, and too stubborn to be a quitter. 

* * *

><p><em>Rewind. Eighteen, in a dingy bar in Academia's newly branded Red Light District, yet too young to have its reputation proceed it, and too harmless to truly be Red Light. Hope wouldn't know at the time, though. He slides unceremoniously up at a chair by the bar, face to face with the bartender, a soggy towel on his belt to go with a stained shirt and an ugly scar on his left cheek.<em>

_"Ya lookin' for somethin's stronger than the look on yer face, just say'et." The bartender gives him a pointed look and places a coaster in front of him._

_"That bad, huh?" Hope fingers the worn underlay. "Something strong, I guess? I don't know," he mutters. "I don't know, I guess, there's a lot I don't know."_

_The bartender flips a few bottles in green and blue and yellow, slim necks and thick bodies, but none is labeled. Hope has no idea what is what and what the concoction he'll end up getting is. "Y'tell me about tha', son. Ye sure do." The bartender puts a lowball glass on the coaster, and leans onto his elbows to Hope's right, entwining rough fingers and puckered knuckles into one other and staring to the distant end of the room._

_"There's just so much we don't _know_. The government does nothing but supply truth to the people, but there's so little of it. We don't know much, so what's there to tell to those who want to know?" He runs his finger along the rim of the glass, regards the liquid which shifts in transparent blues, swirls it, and then puts the glass down onto the tabel until it swivels dangerously._

_The bartender studies him. "Y'seem awfully grown'n the head, if ye get."_

_Hope nods. "I wanted-want, to change things," he says._

_"Maybe bit too much, eh?"_

_He taps his fingers on the glass. "I don't know," he admits._

_"Well, even y'heroes need a break, don't ye, so drink that." Hope doesn't know if he should. You heroes, he's not so much a hero. There have been so many he couldn't save. But he drinks, downs half and isn't quit the post-burn in his tongue and throat until late._

_"There'y go, boy," the bartender says and puts a large, crinkled palm at his shoulder. "The man'n the corner wants ye somethin' too, seems like. He ain't trouble, so yer safe."_

_Slight skip forward. Maqui has cropped his hair short, but he's taller, and Hope knows he was as scrawny as himself, four years ago. His stringy arms are thicker, and he doesn't bounce on the soles of his feet to meet Hope after such long time._

_He leaves the glass half empty at his seat and walks across the room to the mechanic. His clothes are worn, but the pink has shifted black and the prints are removed, the bagginess shrunk to fit. The goggles are thin glasses obscuring the blue of his eyes, and the headphones is a wired mic around his ear. Hope sits across Maqui, unsure of what to say. Then the blonde lights up._

_"It's been a while!" He exlaims, reaching to clasp Hope's hand. "I haven't been around here, I guess. Still helping with the constructions of Bodhum. Or New Bodhum, I guess?" He shrugs as though it doesn't matter._

_"It doesn't matter, I s'ppose," Maqui continues. "I'm just running a coupla errands, and I saw you in here and thought, wow, you know? Someone who might know about Snow." And then the smile is a smear dripping off his face._

_Hope frowns. "He isn't with you all, in Bodhum?"_

_"No way man." Maqui shakes his head. "He took off two years ago, claiming he'd find Serah's sister again. That's the last anyone of us saw of him."_

* * *

><p>Fade. Come back. Snow. Hope shakes his head at the reddish and melancholy twilight of the evening, the confusion from six years prior-the anger, at the surface of everything, settling back into his stomach with a well oiled click. He'd come to trust Snow, to believe they'd do this together, the remaining of them. That's what he'd thought when he was eighteen at least, before meeting Maqui in the Red Light District corner bar.<p>

The most stupid thing about him pouring himself into work post that, post-mortem, he might've said jokingly, is that he wanted to become what he'd detested in Snow at the beginning of their acquintance-a hero. The man who fought for a noble cause and threw himself into battle for anyone's sake, because he had that awful complex about saving everyone.

Hope had realized, perhaps a chance too late, that he'd put loathe into the fact that Snow should've saved his mom. He wanted to save everyone, so why couldn't he? Since then, he'd wanted to have them all back. Because nobody deserves to lose anybody.

He goes to bed without eating, a salad prepared on the kitchen sink and eventually strewn in the trash. He twists in the sheets, but sleep comes eventually, despite the reckoning of foreboding settling into his chest. 

* * *

><p><em>Twenty one. Bartholomew Estheim cleans his glasses before perching them back high upon the bridge of his nose, suit crinkling and the material crunching where his elbow bends and then straightens again.<em>

_"I want you promoted, son," he says. Hope sits across him, tie a slight inch drawn too tightly around his neck. "I want you promoted to the highest division. Head of the Research of Science department."_

_A heartbeat. One. Two. Three. Hope grins hard, that ear-splitting toothy smile, too wide and too hard, an exercise of facial muscles that lasts all the way through the sincere and light "thank you Sir, it's a true honor," and then the rough and long handshake._

_His dad smiles. "I know you'll justify the position, and the responsibility, that comes with it well, Hope. Congratulations."_

* * *

><p>He wakes thrice during the night, and then at six thirty from the alarm. Hope suspects he hasn't slept since four, merely dozed for long stretches, flopping in and out of consciousness and any memories of doing so failing to present themselves.<p>

He climbs out of the large bed, sheets sticking to his clammy chest and legs as he makes a move to disentagle himself and move about the apartment. He blinks lack of sleep from the corners of his eyes, and knots the sheets around his waist when they prove futile to escape, carefully walking about the apartment.

He takes a long shower, something he usually doesn't, scrubbing at the hollow of his throat and reaching blindly also for the suspended space between his shoulder blades, patiently scratching with an extended rough brush. Washing his hair and leaning heavily against the tiled shower space until his shoulders feel numb and itchy with scald, Hope goes about it mostly as a routine after that; readies a cappuccino shot out of the coffee maker, to go. And goes.

Alyssa calls him when he's just outside the office at seven fifteen, breath quick and wild.

"Director, I need you in the office immediately." She gathers up her voice. "Unless you're completely unfit for the public, that is." There is a teasing edge to her breathless excitement.

Hope laughs, but doesn't deny the thrill shimmying his spine. "I'll be right up."

He meets her in the elevator, stepping out when Alyssa pushes him back in. "We're flying out to the Paddra Ruins, we received an official statement this morning saying they've had activity from the sensors on the Time Portal," she says.

"Activity? How much?" Hope blanches.

"Enough for the urgent notice," Alyssa replies, digging in the stack of papers she carries, and hands him a thin sheet.

Hope skims it with something akin to his namesake building in his chest, pushing at his lungs and digging nails into him. He has worked _so_ hard for this, and suddenly-suddenly it is there. It's there, almost tangible, a physicality, and Hope hasn't even directly been in contact with it.

"We need to stay out there for a few days," he says, flatly. "For as long as it takes."

Alyssa nods. "Of course, Director."

"This could mean something else entirely for all the work we do, Alyssa. Do you understand that?"

"What do you mean, 'do you understand that'. Of course I understand." She gives him a put off look.

Hope offers an apologetic half smile. She waves it away, a small smile of her own, crooking her fingers around the stack in her arms and leading the way through the office building, her heals clicking away and her unbuttoned jacket sways around her waist. Alyssa have already issued a PSICOM floater to take them, and sometimes he understands why she is his closest work confidant.

He realizes he hasn't driven a military floater since, well, since he was fourteen. The vehicle isn't a single seat like they once stole several of and used as a quick escape, something Hope wasn't nearly blasé about then, but the infrastructure can be likened to its smaller kin, and he can't hinder a small smile.

"What's that?" Alyssa pokes at his cheek.

He gently removes her finger. "Honestly? I remember when I stole one of these up on Cocoon." He smiles wryly.

Alyssa cocks an eyebrow, all the while looking amused. "Really, you?" She sits down next to him, perking on the edge of her seat and looking out over the cityscape whilst they quickly gain ground.

"Yeah, me, pretty hard to imagine, huh?" He looks out over the vast sky landscape, glittering sun through damp clouds on a milky blue canvas. It's beautiful, Pulse, he reflects.

"I've never heard your story thoroughly, Hope, but I don't find it hard to believe," Alyssa says. "You're a strong person, and even someone thick can figure out that you've been through a lot."

Hope is at the central of an era of enlightenment, but part of his personal history was destroyed with Cocoon, and he's since kept it so. The people who survived The Fall can perhaps still vaguely remember it, but not everyone were exposed directly to the l'Cie and Fal'Cie conflict. It isn't as though it's a taboo, it's simply a matter of not wanting to complicate things.

And Hope isn't entirely sure how he's supposed to explain to anyone who didn't live it, how he became a l'Cie who completed his Focus - destroying Cocoon, and now lives on, at the very heart of another civilization.

"I lived pretty close to where most of the war was fought, I guess." Hope says. "And you have to do, some things, when it's all you can do. But you're right, I did lose a lot of people dear to me."

She says nothing, then-"I'm here, though. You know that," and accompanied with a smile. He nods, and they're silent for the remaining tenure of the flight, until the mountains are no longer silhouettes on the bleakly colored sky, and instead rise rocky and solid and sharp from the ground, towering in a wholly different way than mere man-made buildings.

The Academy base is nestled into the Ruins, the mountain pass previously void of much save for stray animals and monsters now peppered with military and government employed scientists. The landing dock waves them down after a identification briefing over the ship's intercomm, their pilot and Hope verifying their identities before they are given permission to land.

The air is sooty and dusty, and the ruins are a concoction of corroding pipes and modernized technology, of lab coats sweaty and brown in the humidities, of uniformed PSICOM snipers and foot soldiers. They are groups of three and three loitering about the area, rifles pointed towards the ground, helmets unmoving as they converse in baritones.

"Standby!" Hope catches filtering through the noise of the pilot killing the engine. Fade out, they climb out.

"Director Estheim, it's a pleasure to see you," says the closest soldier, stepping up and reaching for Hope's hand. They go back, the target man #1279, whose birthright is Igdehl, the soldier having reclaimed the name since he got promoted to Cpt. rank, worked immediately under Hope for some time a few years prior.

He closes his palm around the other's deftly. "Likewise, Captain, it's been a while."

"Yeah? I like to think it hasn't, it's just another day from your workload. But perhaps it has been, and I'm too flattering vis-à-vis, myself." Igdehl removes his helmet in time for Hope to see the smirk fade on his sweat beaded upper lip.

He laughs. "Don't doubt yourself, Captain, although I do prefer you without your automatic."

"Ah, knew there'd be something. I forget you don't associate with such weapons such as this baby, anymore," says the PSICOM, patting the handle. "Anyway, shall I escort you to the facilities? They backdropped me in on what you're doing here during a briefing earlier, so I figured."

Hope nods. "We'd be thankful."

The ruins rise thick around them, wiring the area into a cocoon of rust and metal and Pulse mineral stone. Igdehl is quick to fall behind Hope, striking up what charm he claims he has left from his years as a PSICOM Academy recruit for Alyssa.

"Tell me, did you fall from the sky, bereft of your angel wings, or are you just a beauty extraordinaire?"

Alyssa snorts. "I'd like to think people still didn't make the _Falling from the sky_-jokes, since we're running on AF time, but the civilization continually surprises me."

Hope laughs, but save for it, they continue through the ruins silent, a trickle of humanity surrounded by unkempt nature and and an old, forgotten civilization.

The unearthing of large, white tents greet them further along the path, and the area populates with white clad scientists instead of soldiers. Many of them wear the standardized blue tie and silvery pin over their breastbone, others don't. But they part in hushed wonder when their party of five step through the security control to the drum of boots and the sun.

"Your specialists should be North of here, I believe they told me," Igdehl says, and tips his head at them, Alyssa especially, with a sprinkle of laughter in his mouth. "Have a good day, and I hope to see you soon, Estheim."

They part with a rough handshake, and Hope gives leave to the additional accompanying soldiers. Alyssa taps her heel in the dust with a vaguely amused, if unimpressed, stare into the PSICOM captain's back. "You surround yourself with character." She shakes her head.

Hope shrugs good naturedly, but offers her the crook of his arm, and leads them through the area, occasionally briefling halting to extend a hand to a face of familiarity. They're men and women of high position and pride within the department, work having extended a heavy load onto their backs. The women having exchanged the customary low heels for flat soles, and the men merely half shaved who wear wrinkled coats more grey than white. But the tired mouths quirk a little in accomplishment when they see them, and Hope grows a little anxious the closer they get.

The tent is larger than the others, perched on a jut of cliff under the far mountain wall, and Hope is thankful for the thin veil of coolness the shadow of its size provides in the balmy, tropic air.

The guard at the entrance looks unimpressed under the orange visor he wears. "Identification," he chews, "the full one, 'f you might."

Hope hands his legitimation over to the guard, studying the helmet he wears, unlike the one produced for soldiers. The materials are all the same, but where PSICOM have stripe of tinted glass for their eyes, and a device controlling oxygen supply and limiting the uniqueness of the voice to a metallic ring. The department guards all have a T-shaped glass surface on their helmets, allowing for mouth, nose and eyes to be fully visible. The guards do, on a larger scale, work in closer proximity to the actual research, and so the need for constant verification of that no fabrications in identity is done, the open helmet is a solution.

The guard smiles through thin lips. "Never imagined I'd get to ID the Director of Academy, welcome Sir." He inclines his head, but snaps up again quickly, surveying Alyssa. "Need to see m'lady's legitimation too."

"Needless to say," Alyssa replies, and hands over her card.

"Thank you muchly. Yer clear, Sir, Ma'am. Do enter."

The throb of pulse in the ground stills when they duck under the plastic wrap entrance, a noose on the feverish activity, and the wind picks up when the voices still. Hope examines the insides of the tent, the ten or so workers, their tired brows and eyes, the Time Portal, creating a space center, connected to thin IV lines and pulse monitors, the various measuring devices and computers. A examination table, flocked with people, and a tenuring shadow atop it.

"Ah, Director Estheim, I'm-"

"Estheim-_Hope_?"

Cut out. Stop, hold the tape. 

* * *

><p><em>This is a vignette of memories, a series of cut out pictures and sequences in which Hope remembers Snow Villiers in. Big, mighty hero in a cape with scarred fists and a good aim. Always wore a smile, even if it had strained when he'd first looked at Hope,<em> dared_ to look at him again._

_He loathes him. He couldn't save Hope's mother, Nora with her bright teeth smile, serene eyes, Hope's features and pale colors. It's unfair. They're being purged and it's so unfair, he's only fourteen and his eardrums crack, pop, sizzle because of the repeated gunfire and explosions. He doesn't want to touch them, is offered a gun but is too much of a child to hold it. He withdraws the pads of his fingers as if they frayed at the touch of the handle._

_He can't see Snow's reasoning behind helping a Pulse l'Cie. It's insanity, and it's again, unfair. He is responsible for the death of his mom, and now he wants to save a_ Pulse l'Cie.

_Break off. Snow saves him. Of course he does, he plays big hero and he saves him. During the journey he learns how to forgive, and on Pulse they're in it together. A large palette of lush greens and pastel skies, stretches of undisturbed nature, of springs and mountain passes, dry sand bunkers and wild weather._

_"We'll be okay, kid," Snow says at one point. He can't remember if he was conscious or not. Snow pushes him into his own side, big gloved palm settling on his hair, still wet from fever and spring water, body cool against him._

_"It's not like I can tell the truth from that, Snow. You're always saying the same thing," Hope croaks from a sand paper throat. Snow snorts._

_"Yeah, maybe. But nobody's died yet. And that counts for somethin'."_

_Hope doesn't object. Nora, his mother, flashes in his memory, a memory now, enhanced by the fever. The pearl of her hair, the green of her eyes, blotches of color now against the blackness of the Hanging Edge. He wants to say it. But he doesn't blame Snow anymore, and he knows he too grieved for the lives he couldn't save then._

_Snow shoves lightly on the side of his head. "Go back to sleep, kid, we're not leaving without you."_

_He does. Cut forward again. Still fourteen. He holds the switchblade out for Serah, somehow he knows it holds a measure of significance, but seeing equal parts reminiscence and distraught on her face isn't what he expects._

_"I'm sorry," echoes Snow. A penny for his thoughts, and Serah lets out a sob muffled by Snow's thick leather coat, burnt and badly smelling. Hope doesn't know what to say, what to do. He tries a smile little at Sazh, his son in arms, chocobo tweeting softly whilst perching on the boy's curled fingers._

_Snow and Serah never get married, although moving in together. Hope moves in with Bartholomew in a racked up apartment at the edge of the construction of the new capital, still nameless, still just a dream. He's sixteen when Snow disappears, and he doesn't even know that much of him. In the end, he only knew Snow in the here and the now, and when he didn't, he didn't know him at all._

* * *

><p>Snow jumps off the table, gently snapping off electrodes stuck to his breast and close to the pulse point on his throat. Hope doesn't have an acute response, stuck to the ground, thoughts swirling at a dangerous pace, throat muscles constricting around the heart threatening to jump up in his mouth.<p>

"Hope! Just - wow, it's you." Snow studies him with bright eyes.

"I-yeah, it's me," says Hope meekly, before he's crushed to Snow's shoulder. The scientists in the room move to restrain him, but Hope waves with the hand not trapped between their skin, and tentatively pats Snow's back, feeling untuned to the situation, and strung too high. He's intensely relieved when he's let go of.

"Intense welcoming," Hope notes wryly.

"I'm not apologizing to you, it's been a long time," Snow says. "You work here?"

Hope steps back, just a minor step, one boot backwards, but Snow notices. He clears his throat. "Yeah, I'm sort of, I'm Director of this department of Academy, and -"

"Director, to be frank." Dr. Luxain, if Hope remembers it correctly, coughs with unsubtle grace, interrupting. "I doubt you should be in close proximity to the subject, no more than necessary, at the very least. We've just confirmed that he has indeed travelled from 300 AF, and should be given clearance - if he does so - within the next twenty four hours, not prior to that."

Hope snaps his jaw tight, feeling overwhelmed. "300-you're certain, Doctor?"

Snow rolls his eyes. "I, am right here, and yeah. Last I checked, I was in Sunleth, I was with Serah-" he breaks off, as if the energy left him a shell of what he was. Hope frowns, and he can see the bruises beneath Snow's eyes now, concaves in his face, shutting down.

"I want him moved to direct care under me in Academia, effect immediate."

Dr. Luxain looks displeased at the order, but nods nonetheless. "Sir," he says, and moves about the tent. Hope turns to Alyssa, who's remained quiet at his side, wary of the unfurling happenings before her. "Alyssa," he asks, "can you verify to Academia that we're coming back an additional plus one, and write over all the recent documentations surrounding this project on my ROOT?"

She nods. "I'll brief the PSICOM Captain that we'll be taking our leave as soon as possible." She steps outside the tent, and Hope doesn't quite know how to assess the situation now, feeling as though his immaculate day scheme crashed through a roadblock, heading down towards the unknown abyss.

Snow quirks an eyebrow upwards. "So, what am I now, an experiment?"

"Not a hero anymore, huh?" says Hope, straightening his jacket and tie.

Snow averts his gaze. "Not for some time, no."

Hope gestures towards the tent opening, plastic flaps fluttering gently in the non-existent breeze. "That was your biggest pipe dream, wasn't it?" They walk, making odd characters sticking out in the surroundings. Hope takes notice now, of a nick of pale tissue stretching across Snow's mouth when he talks. Of the noticeably longer hair, hanging straight down his neck, the bandana is gone.

"Wasn't really a pipe dream, was it? But I was a lousy executioner," Snow mutters.

Hope watches the pasted sky move, rearranging itself as a backdrop to the yellow sunshine. "You didn't find Light?" he asks.

Snow breathes, "No," and winds the leather cape around his broad chest. "Not even in three hundred damn years." Hope sees Snow's movement in his peripheral, not technically intruding, but feels heat paste on the tips of his cheek bones nonetheless.

Then he says, "I'm going to have to explain that one, don't I?" and lets out a breath of mirthless laugther.

Hope nods. "Yeah, I'd say so," he says mildly. Snow hadn't asked him how he knew, but perhaps he'd expected Hope to search-to find out. He has been, inactively, sure, but he's searched too. For a way to begin doing it.

"We'll go to my apartment," Hope says.

Snow searches his eyes, thankful. "It'd be nice," he admits. "Change of pace, y'know?"

Hope says, "_If_ I knew." 

* * *

><p>Dusk is settling when Hope can leave the office. He hadn't expected Snow's emerging from 300 AF to be something to throw under the hypothetical carpet, but the health department has him go through a thorough check-up, the security department likewise, they travel with a consistent military escort, and Hope has to file a number of reports and sign his digital signature on more allowances than he cares for.<p>

The sky is an oceanic depth of blue, a wisp of clouds hanging low and dangling over them when Hope dismisses the Guardian Corps outside of the flat campus. Snow breathes an exaggerated sigh when Hope locks his door behind them.

"I don't think the military's been this interested in me since I was an escaped l'Cie fugitive," he notes with a touch of black humor.

"Likewise," Hope says, sliding his coat off, "I don't work much with either special forces or Guardian Corps, I just have to whenever you're involved."

"You've developed a sense of humor, kid," Snow smirks.

"I've developed this city too," Hope says. It hangs heavy in the middle ground between them, he feels. And at some point, he feels that everything that divides them now, will fade out in the background in time. Seven years, amongst other things, and everything Snow knows, and Hope doesn't.

"So, what have I done, you'll ask?" Snow hits out with his arms, the gesture akin to the one he made a decade prior, not knowing how to comfort his distraught fiancée. Hope nods, it would be his next question, when they'd left the hallway. He leads them into the living room, to the polished floorboards and ratty carpet, black leather sofa and flat television. The pale walls, the impersonal and clinical smell.

"I've been jumping through time," Snow starts. "Crazy, huh? Time's a real paradox, not to mention a right bitch. But I've been jumping it since I met Serah in 3 AF. After that? Well, guess I've been a bit everywhere. There's no now, or then, time's just what you make it out to be, in the end."

Hope remains standing whilst Snow throws himself down onto the sofa, his cape rattling with sand and dirt, and he looks vaguely apologetic. "Don't worry about it," Hope waves a dismissive gesture, "it's nothing."

"Right." Snow doesn't look convinced, a shadow of guilt over how he worries his teeth on his bottom lip. "Well, I haven't really found out much. I kind of go, wherever any possible tracks lead me. Even if I've half given up now." He huffs. "Three hundred years into the future makes you lose a lot of hope." He catches Hope's eye as if he really wants to convey something, but Hope doesn't know what.

"How do you travel?" Hope asks.

"Through the portals," Snow replies. "Not all of them work like they should, though. So I can't skip from year to year, mostly being why I've been a bit all over the place."

"All of that, for Lightning?"

Snow hesitates. Just breaching two halfs of a heartbeat. "Yeah, we were in it together, weren't we? It's not like I can leave someone behind." Snow smiles, and had this been, for Hope ten years ago, for Snow a lot more, he would've winked, tough guy hero. Now he looks tired, a final smile forced onto his face, and Hope slumps down in the sofa next to him, silence lapsing thick between them.

Hope wakes from a state of dozing some time later, eyelids sleep thick, stomach rumbling heavy with hunger. He can't bring himself to move to the kitchen to fix something, though. His wristwatch reads 3:04, so he figures he'll move to the bed and crash once again.

He almost startles out of his clothes when a heavy weight lolls from his shoulder to rest, if unbalanced, in the nook of his collarbone. Hope never noticed how heavy of a sleeper Snow was, but having lived on the constant edge for months, scratching feverishly at their l'Cie brands, keeping guns at their hips, he supposes none of them could afford to sleep more than lightly, eyeballs moving beneath thin and purple bruised eyelids.

He prods at Snow gently, rousing the older man to a state of merely semi-sleep. "Whassat?" he slurs.

"Me not sleeping on the couch," replies Hope, shoving Snow's head gently to the side to get up.

"G'night," Snow mumbles, half unconscious, making a heavyweight flop back down on the couch. The mattress is hardly soft beneath him, but the man seems naught uncomfortable. Hope rubs at one eye, feeling increasingly more awake.

"No, you're not sleeping on my couch, c'mere Villiers. You're taking the other side of the bed."

Snow turns his face an inch, squinting. "'S your bed," he says.

"And my couch. You'll gladly get to drool on my pillow, just not on my leather couch."

Snow sits up, clothes haphazard and twisted around his limbs. "What?" he asks, disoriented. "No. No, I'll take t'couch."

"You're not. Get up."

"Can't share beds, Hope."

"Can't dirty my couch, Snow."

"I mean-haven't." He blanches. "I haven't, since-Serah."

Hope looks at him collective, calm. "I'm not Serah," he replies.


End file.
